Spin Cycle

Semantic Overload

Literally, "Semantic Restructuring is the re-arranging
of the building blocks of meaning. Pragmatically
it is the pursuit of behavioral change, behavioral excellence via
perceptual and conceptual flexibility and
agility.

That definition, from Brief Therapy with
Achilles, is not all bad, at least not in
context as part of the conclusion of my story of
Achilles. Still, there's something missing.

Consider what it's like when you repeat a
word, over and over and over and over and over
and before long you wonder if it's even the word
you thought it was or if it's a word at all.
Most of us have had this experience; it's akin
to the childhood pleasure of spinning around and
around until we collapse in dizzy delight on the
living room floor.

What's at action here is by "repeating the word"
we eventually get to a place where we become
conscious of the arbitrariness of the
relationship of the sounds of the word with the
meaning of the word. Those relationships are
exactly that, arbitrary. As are most of the
meaningful relationships of concepts and ideas
we walk around with. Not random, not lacking in
pattern, but having a pattern that was created
in a completely arbitrary fashion, with the
exception of bits here and there, perhaps in
school, perhaps in learning to solve problems
and do things. But by and large the concepts
and ideas and sensory experiences we walk around
with are related as arbitrarily, as tenuously,
as the connection between the sound of the word
"amoeba" and the actual sound of an amoeba.

Turns out that many times when we are unhappy
with things in our life it isn't us or our life
that needs changing, it is often enough to
simply update some of these arbitrary
relationships between the ideas and concepts and
sensory experiences we walk around with. And
one way to do this is with semantic overload,
purposely working an idea or concept or
relationship or representation over and over and
over until the chains of association are
weakened, loosened, made pliable and flexible
so they can be re-arranged to allow for new, less
arbitrary, more useful associations.

There are two fields of therapy that helped
create this idea of semantic overload. First is
Feldenkrais
techniques. The opening exercises of "Awareness
Through Movement," are very much like repeating
a word over and over and over, except instead of
a word you are repeating an otherwise trivial
movement. Through the repetitions there is a
re-coding of the movement, it's meaning, and,
cumulatively (according to Feldenkrais
proponents) an increase in awareness. The other
well known example of therapeutic semantic
overload is the use of mantra or chanting in
many religious practices. Indeed an altered
state can be reached through the simple
expedient of repeating a phrase or holy-word
over and over and over and over and over and
over, all the while pointing the internal
sensory circuits toward representations of a
better life, a better being, a better world.

Now, the preceding paragraph should not be taken
as an endorsement of either method, nor should
this sentence be taken as a challenge. I
mention these examples because they share
something with the common experience we've all
had. That experience, the loosening of the
bonds of meaning, is at the heart of semantic
restructuring.

Of course this is not always a welcome
experience for all. Some folks take a dim view
indeed of having the bonds of their meanings
diddled with in any fashion. There are methods
for them too, elsewhere on the site.